


prometheus, bring me home

by rowenabane



Series: re:visited [2]
Category: NCT (Band), WAYV, WayV (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Body Horror, Death, Declarations Of Love, Horror, Inspired by Frankenstein, M/M, Mild Gore, Needles, Playing Fast and Loose with the Laws of Anatomy, Please read notes, Unspecified Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-27 07:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20041819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowenabane/pseuds/rowenabane
Summary: Ten is just beginning to learn what it means to be human.





	prometheus, bring me home

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! welcome back to another episode of "alysia has no impulse control and couldn't stop herself from writing 15k"
> 
> As a warning, this fic is based off of _Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley, so there are several instances of blood/gore/general bodily unpleasantry. Please be aware while reading!! I hope you enjoy!! <3
> 
> (all quotes from _Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley)

_ VERSE ONE // CREATION _

_ “There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.” _

In the beginning, there is light.

Swirling eddies of it, streaks of it in the open sky above, light in glass encasings and light on pale white pillars. This is the first thing the man knows: that life is akin to light.

The man, who is not quite sure if he is a man or something else, blinks. He stares up at the darkness above him, that darkness interspersed with twinkling pinpricks of light, and finds a face. It is a kind face, a face with soft eyes and parted lips, a hopeful face. The man does not know what hope is yet. He is not quite sure.

He blinks. There is a tingling in his shoulder, a tingling that continues down and down through his arms and chest. It is like an electric current, his mind supplies, but he is not quite sure what that is. 

The man registers pressure against his hand, another hand, and some instinctual part of him smiles at the face above him. He hears a word, feels his lips moving, but is not quite sure if it is him talking. 

“Hello?” The words halt, they stutter, they do not come easy.

“Hello,” the face replies. It smiles at him, dark hair tousled.

Ten sits up, hands digging into the cold table beneath him. The face, which connects to a body as most faces do, wraps an arm around his waist to support him. The touch is cautious, wary, unsure. He stares at the face, trying to place it somewhere in his memories. He finds he has none, at least none that truly matter.

The face speaks first. “I’m Kun,” it says, and finally the man on the table has something to latch onto. A voice, a face, a smile: things that are real.

“And who am I?” he asks in halting speech, bewildered. The body that calls itself Kun pauses.

“Ten,” he says, smiling. “Welcome, Ten.”

…

He is Ten. He has a number for a name.

It does not bother him because he has no reference. His mind is as blank as a slate, blank with only smatterings of words, expressions, instincts. He longs to hold, to feel to touch—he longs to be held, to be felt, to be touched.

He swings his legs over the table and his bare feet are cold against the floor. His shirt drags across his skin, the sensation new and unfamiliar. He holds his hand out in front of him, observing the thick black thread holding his fingers to his palm and his palm to his wrist. The stitches have a strange, methodical delicacy to them, a tiny beauty in their function.

Ten stands and even though his first steps are unsteady, he is not afraid to fall. Kun’s arm is right there and he grabs onto it, walking with unsteady steps until the path becomes easier, until he can step without losing his balance. This world he has been born into is strange, filled with strange, strange things, and Ten wonders at it all. He runs his hands over objects he does not yet know the name of, takes in sights he is only just experiencing for the first time. He experiences the world in a haze of crystal clarity, of focus.

He holds his hand up to Kun’s, marvels at the smoothness of Kun’s wrists and fingers, the absence of black lines. It is so different from himself, but yet the same—the same figure, shifted. He looks up at Kun, at that smiling face, and finds another name for him._ Creator. _

“Come along,” Kun tells Ten. “There are other things for you to see.”

…

The man in the mirror is Ten. Ten is a _ person, _ now.

He leans forward, watching the way his eyes trace the edges of his image. He can see the stitches at his throat bob as he swallows, watches the lamplight shine along his gray hair. It is an odd shade, he feels, but he has no reference. He does not know.

Kun slips him into a nicer shirt, delicate fabric dusting the edges of the sleeves. He can feel it tickling his wrists, see it covering the black, and wonders at the delicacy of the material. Is he that delicate? A fluttering piece of fabric, held together with threads?

Kun dabs at the stitches on his neck with a wet cloth and Ten looks at him, softly and with curiosity he cannot name. He stays quiet.

The first thing Ten learns is that his creator, this man named Kun, is careful with him. He treats him as if he might break, as if his bones might crumble along with the rest of him.

“How do you feel?” Kun asks, watching him with delighted eyes.

“I feel…” Ten tilts his head, searching for words that do not make themselves readily apparent to him. “I feel.”

“That’s good, that’s good.” Kun presses his fingers to Ten’s wrist, counting beneath his breath. He does the same with his fingers pressed to Ten’s neck, touch gentle and soft.

“Does anything hurt?”

Ten stares at him. “Hurt?”

Kun pauses, mouth opening and closing. “Does anything feel not right? Not whole?”

Ten twirls his wrists, breaths in and out, blinks his eyes. “No.”

“Good.” He stands, reaching out his hand. Ten is familiar with this gesture and takes it without hesitation. 

“Come with me,” Kun says. 

...

Ten has a body. He has a body held together by thick black thread and he can count the sutures at his wrists and ankles, circling his neck and waist. There is a thick black line that runs right down the middle of his chest, the stitches denser and thicker than anywhere else. He knows that this stitch holds in the most important parts of him, the ones that beat and breathe.

“Your use of language is better than expected,” Kun says, scribbling in a notebook as Ten sits on a chair in front of him. “Do you have any memories?”

Ten’s mind is as blankly white as the moon that rises outside the windows. The only memories he has are of light and cold and waking, as if from a dream. He shakes his head.

Kun nods, writing something down. 

Something soft brushes against Ten’s ankle and he looks down to see a small, inquisitive creature staring up at him. It takes him a moment to name it in his head but eventually, it comes to him. The name is _ cat. _

The cat looks up at Ten with multicolored eyes, one green and one blue, it’s white fur interspersed with gray splotches. He reaches down to pat its head and he feels a small ridge along its skull. He looks closer and sees black stitches, neat beneath the cat’s ears.

“Ah,” Kun says with a smile. “That’s Hutong.”

“Hutong?” The cat purrs.

“A good friend of mine,” Kun says, smiling. He makes a tsking noise and the cat runs to him, hopping into his lap. His smile is blinding and kind, and Ten remembers that life is akin to light.

Reader, take note: the first lesson Ten learns is the most important.

…

Ten learns things from books. That is his reference.

He learns of continents and oceans far from the rolling hills of his home. He learns of pirates and ships and battles at sea. He learns of magnificent gardens, of palaces, of places he can only dream of. 

He reads and learns and poetry brims within him, dream and visions of things he has not seen. He tells Kun this, all the things he has learned, and Kun sits next to him and urges him to say more.

Ten learns, little by little. He devours books in Kun’s library, some fiction and some not, some old as time and some new. He traces his fingers over gilt edges and leather covers, over words that he only stumbles over sometimes.

Sometimes, when Kun is too busy to care, he sits in Kun’s laboratory with a book. They sit in silence, Kun hunched over his desk and Ten just drifting in the background. Sometimes even Hutong joins them, purring at Kun’s ankles.

The only books that Ten is not allowed to read are the ones beneath Kun’s lab bench. He remembers how he reaches out for them, curious, only to have Kun grab his hands and gently say that they are not meant for his eyes. Ten listens, had heeds his instructions. He is curious, yes, and he says so. Kun obligingly cracks one open, revealing chemical formulas and numbers. 

“These are boring things,” he says, smiling. “These are not worth your time.”

Ten listens. After all, doesn’t his creator know best?

…

Here are things that Ten learns, or relearns.

Different types of cloth feel different against his skin. The cloth Kun uses to dab at his stitches is coarser than the one that makes up his shirts, thinner than the ones he lies between at night searching for sleep.

Apples are very crunchy. The green ones are sour.

Day and night are their own entities, never quite the same length. The darkest hour of the night is the one right between sunset and sunrise, and it brings Ten the most peace.

Hutong likes tummy rubs and grabbing Ten’s hand with his paws.

Kun lives alone. He speaks fondly of a family that lives far, far away; tells Ten that if anything needs to be done he does it himself. The nearest town is hours away, and they are surrounded by hills and mountains. There is a lake not too far away, and Kun speaks highly of its beauty. Ten would like to see it, someday.

Poetry is like music in written form, like the songs Kun plays on his piano when he thinks Ten is asleep. Words make tinkling notes, make rhythm and sound. It pleases him.

Ten doesn’t like to sleep. Kun asks him if he dreams and the answer is, no, he does not dream. He would not call what he sees when his eyes are closed dreams. He would call them fragments, call them pieces of a mind trying to put itself together. He sees faces in the dark, faces he has never seen.

Ten would not call the things he sees dreams. He would call them nightmares.

…

Ten feels the presence of others in his body. They echo like memories throughout his limbs, these phantom feelings.

His right leg always wants to dance. His toes tap on their own sometimes, muscles flexing as if preparing to stand and leap. His left hand itches toward the piano without conscious lessons, and every tune it plays seems empty, devoid of a right hand counterpart. Notes are broken, songs disjointed. 

On his right shoulder there is a small scar, old and fading. It is not Ten's, but when he presses on it his arm recalls the memory of fire, of burning.

His left foot has calluses, his right knee has a scar below the kneecap, his left eye is just a shade of brown lighter than his right. These little things add up to just one sense of self. Him.

And it should be disorienting, this amalgamation of identities, but it holds a strange comfort. It's him, through and through, and even if parts of him are alien they are still his. They are _ his _ parts.

His right hand rubs mindlessly at the stitches on his neck. Yes. These are his parts.

…

  
“Let’s go somewhere today,” Kun says, smiling. “Would you like to see the lake?”

Oh, he _ would _.

It’s quite a walk and Kun takes a small basket of food with them to carry but the distance feels like nothing when he sees the grass, the rolling hills. The wind blows gently and the breeze is warm. The world is like a hand that unfolds before him, inviting and open.

Kun tells riveting stories, he tells funny jokes. He points out the different plants and wildflowers, even stopping to thread some behind Ten’s ears. It is a simple joy that fills Ten, and it is his first.

The lake mirrors the sky so well Ten almost doesn’t understand how the clouds can be in two places at once. He gasps and Kun prods him forward, down the hill and to the edge of the lake.

The lake has a name; Ten does not recall it. He only recalls the feel of water beneath his palms, the ripples on the surface. It is so big, almost an ocean in Ten’s eyes. It is vast. It is endless.

Kun waves him over to a boat tethered at the shore and helps him in. The boat rocks gently on the still water and Ten feels a moment of weightlessness. He is floating, he feels—the water is not really there. The lake is a mirror on air just reflecting the sky.

Kun rows them out to the middle of the lake and the world seems so distant, so far away and lovely. They eat bread and fruit and the world is sparkling bright around them. The water ripples when Ten dips his fingers into it, circles spreading out into nothingness.

They talk, and Ten learns. He learns that Kun spent many years at university studying science and medicine. He is a doctor, technically, but has never had his own practice. He learns that Kun knows a lot of things, that almost everything he knows he taught himself. He worked hard. He moved very far away from his family. He misses them.

Ten stares out at the water for a while, and Kun tilts his head curiously.

“Would you like to learn how to swim?”

“Swim?”

Kun smiles and stands, the boat rocking gently, There’s a splash and suddenly he is in the water, smiling and reaching out for Ten’s hand.

“Join me?”

Hesitation. Then Ten laughs, jumps over the edge of the boat, water splashing around him. The water is warm, just a little cooler than the air.

At first he is afraid he will sink, will fall until he hits the bottom of the lake. He feels the darkness around him but then he feels Kun’s hands on his waist, and he is not afraid anymore.

Kun teaches him how to glide through the water, how to turn his palms to go farther out. He grins when Ten finally gets the hang of it, and lets out a surprised shout when Ten splashes water up into his face.

Happiness. This is a thing Ten learns.

…

“Tell me,” Ten asks Kun, “are you very skilled?”

It is a lovely day, another day that they spend out on the hillsides surrounding Kun’s home. The lake glitters in the distance and they lie in the grass, watching the clouds float lazily overhead.

“Yes,” Kun replies, lying next to him in the grass. “I am.”

“Was becoming a doctor hard?”

“Yes,” Kun says lazily, watching the clouds. Ten rolls on his side, watching him.

“What do you know?”

“Anatomy,” Kun whispers, voice lost in the sibilant rustle of the grass around them. “Medicine. Science. Those things.”

Ten gazes at him, at the guarded expression in Kun’s eyes. His curiosity burns and in that moment he truly believes Kun’s knowledge is endless, truly believes that he knows every secret of the universe.

“Tell me,” Ten says, shifting so close that their shoulders almost touch. “Show me.”

Kun sits up and taps Ten’s forehead. “Frontalis,” he says, touch light. “Zygomaticus major, and minor; orbicularis oris,” he says, tapping Ten’s cheek and then his lips. Ten gives a delighted sound at Kun’s dancing fingers and fancy words. 

“What about this?” Ten says, placing Kun’s hand on the side of his neck.

“Sternoclatomastoid,” he says, and Ten mouths the word, committing it to memory.

“And this?” Ten says, placing Kun’s hand right over his heart. He can feel Kun’s palm through his shirt, and the skin is warm and alive.

Kun pauses. “Pectoralis major, and minor beneath it.”

Ten inhales, and Kun’s eyes are dark and fathomless. His chest does not rise and fall beneath Kun’s hand, almost as if he is holding a breath. Time slows, stills, grinds to a halt.

Kun’s fingers curl in Ten’s shirt and then he slowly lifts his hand. The loss of warmth is agonizing in its own way, and so Ten grabs his hand. He holds it gently with his stitched fingers, placing it back on his chest.

“Tell me more,” he whispers, and he wants so badly to fall into the depths of Kun’s eyes. 

The grass rustles. The sky is blue.

Kun smiles and it is a quiet smile, one that carries the warmth of the sun with it.

“Sternum,” he says, dragging a steady finger down the center of Ten’s chest. He presses gently beneath the bone, at the soft muscle. “Your diaphragm.”

Ten reaches out, fingers resting on Kun’s waist. “This?”

“External oblique,” Kun says, and his breath hitches when Ten moves to rest his hand on his stomach. Ten smiles and Kun gives him a _ look, _ one that he cannot read.

“Rectus abdominis,” he says quietly. Ten feels an unnameable desire pool in his chest, heavy as molten lead. He does not move his hand.

They look at each other, both wanting the same thing but too afraid to ask. The truth hangs between them and it doesn’t have a shape or a name—just a feeling.

Ten wants to ask Kun to do some unspeakable thing, wants him to give him the heavens and earth in the form of a touch, but he is too afraid to ask. The moment hangs between them, vulnerable, and it would be so easy for one of them to reach out to the other and say it. Say the words that hang in the rustling of the grass, the blue of the sky.

They say nothing.

Ten pulls his hand back and Kun looks away, up at the sun.

“We should head back,” he says as he stands, wiping grass from his pants. He picks up the picnic basket with one hand and then reaches for Ten with the other.

Ten takes his hand and says nothing. They walk back to the house, and still he says nothing.

Ten learns that silence can be painful.

…

Ten has a feeling, and he does not know what to call it.

All the books call it love. In the books,_ love _ is synonymous it to romance and picnic dates, to flowers and declarations of affection, to letters, to kisses. Ten has very few of these things, so he does not call the feeling love.

He wants to call it longing, and maybe that is a better word for it; this yearning for a touch, for a kiss, for the more human signs of affection. Ten thinks that maybe if he is _ in love _that will make him more human, but he cannot be sure if that is true.

The truth is this: Ten is in love with Kun. There are no simpler words, there is nothing to say. He loves Kun, more than one would their caretaker or friend. He loves him more than just as his creator, loves him more than just as the being that brought him into this world. He_ loves _him, loves him like all the books say, and that is the truth.

There is a small satisfaction in this. If Ten can love, then that means at least part of him is truly human.

…

Time passes. Day and night remain separate entities.

“My brother will be coming to visit,” Kun tells Ten one morning at breakfast. He is holding an open letter in his hand, and his smile is bright. “He’ll be so glad to meet you.”

He goes into a whirlwind of cleaning and preparing and excited chattering about this phantom member of his family. He tells Ten of times they would get lost in the woods together, drive their parents mad with worry and frustration. He speaks so fondly and Ten envisions a kind person, someone like Kun.

But Kun’s brother is an oddity. He is younger than Kun by a year and his eyes have a watchful quality. Unlike Kun’s eyes, his eyes seek to assess, to destroy. There is a shadow of likeness in his face, but all similarities end there. His hair is blond. His name is Jaehyun.

They greet each other warmly, like brothers should, but when Jaehyun spies Ten standing at the end of the hallway he narrows his eyes.

“Who is this?” he asks Kun, voice sharp but not unkind.

“This is Ten,” Kun says proudly.

Jaehyun eyes him warily before sitting on a couch. He rubs at his eyes and Kun sits across from him. He watches Ten with a cautious, hostile expression. 

They talk quietly for several minutes and Ten lingers in the doorway, hearing nothing but snatched whispers. He sees Jaehyun frown at Kun, sees Kun frown back. They go on like this for a little while longer, and then Jaehyun beckons Ten over with a small, unfriendly wave. Ten hesitates for just a moment, looking at Kun for affirmation. Kun nods, and Ten crosses the room to where Jaehyun is sitting.

Jaehyun takes his hand, gaze clinical and dissecting. He has none of the warmth Kun does, and as far as brothers go they could not be more different. Where Kun is welcoming, Jaehyun is closed off, robotic.

“It looks very human,” Jaehyun says briskly. He examines the black thread along Ten’s fingers. “It could pass.”

“Ten is not an ‘it’,” Kun says quietly.

Jaehyun scoffs. “It has a number for a name,” he says. “How human can it be?”

Shame, red hot and molten, spills into Ten’s throat. He looks down at his feet, counting the pattern of flowers and vines. He has not experienced this emotion before—he does not like the way it makes him feel.

"Jaehyun," Kun says sternly. Jaehyun lets go of Ten's hand, a crease forming between his eyes. His eyes soften. 

"Ten," he says, as if trying the name out in his mouth. "Interesting."

…

Jaehyun stays for several more days, and Ten rarely sees him. He feels as if it Jaehyun is consciously avoiding him, avoiding the thought of him. Is he truly that monstrous? Is he a monster?

Kun and Ten eat together and Jaehyun does not join them. Ten hears voices in the hallway, always of a warning pitch, but he never listens too close. He is afraid of what he will hear.

Ten is standing in the hallway one night, walking through the dark with his hand on the wall. He has no reason to do this—he just does.

He feels something rubbing at his ankle and looks down to see Hutong mewling at him, mismatched eyes bright in the night.

“Hey buddy,” Ten whispers, bending down to rub the top of Hutong’s head. “Can’t sleep?” 

The cat meows lovingly, pushing at Ten’s hand.

“I did not expect to see you up so late,” a voice says, and Ten whirls to see Jaehyun walking down the darkened hallway. The lack of light makes him seem like a living shadow, nothing more than a silhouette.

“Hello, Jaehyun.” Ten watches Jaehyun walk closer, and he can feel Hutong rubbing at his ankle.

Jaehyun looks at Hutong, then kneels on the carpet, extending a hand. The cat comes forward, sniffing at his fingers, before he allows Jaehyun to pat his head. The ghost of a smile crosses his face, and then it vanishes. He looks up at Ten.

“What are you doing awake at this hour?” he asks. 

“I could ask the same of you,” Ten says, and the words come out sharper than he expects them to.

Jaehyun nods, half smiling. “A very human answer.”

Ten does not understand what he means.

“Can you not sleep?” Jaehyun asks, scooping Hutong into his arms. The cat purrs into the crook of his elbow, softly and sleepily.

“I am… not tired, right now.”

Jaehyun nods. “That makes two of us, then. Walk with me?”

Jaehyun heads out the front doors and into the gardens, still holding Hutong in his arms. The garden looks different at night, al the familiar shapes of leaves and flowers twisted into menacing shadows by the dark. The shapes are unfamiliar, and every brush of shrubbery or foliage feels like a hand reaching out to grab him.

Hutong purrs in Jaehyun’s arms as Jaehyun abruptly turns to Ten. “What do you think of my brother?”

Ten frowns. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think of him?” Jaehyun says, scratching Hutong’s ears. “His...disposition?”

Ten is silent for a moment, thoughts swirling in the dark of his mind like sparks. “I cannot say,” he responds. “I have no reference. You are the first person I have met, other than Kun.”

Jaehyun nods. Hutong raises his head, squirming until Jaehyun releases him. He disappears into the leaves of the garden, eyes like jewels in the shadows. “That’s understandable,” he says slowly. “But surely you must think something of him? Is he kind, to you?”

“Yes,” Ten says, sitting on a stone bench. _ Yes, he is the kindest man I have ever known. _

“My brother,” Jaehyun says quietly as he sits next to Ten, “was always the responsible one. The reliable one. I always looked up to him, and he always took care of me.”

Ten is silent and he watches Jaehyun rub his hands together, fiddling with a set of rings on his fingers.

“But Kun was…how do I say this? He was always_ searching _ for something. He was too bright, too perceptive: he saw things that I never could.” Jaehyun pauses. “He wanted to know things, no matter the cost. He can be...intense.”

The moon is high. Hutong watches them with jeweled eyes, tail swishing lazily over the grass.

“Do not fall in love with my brother,” Jaehyun says, and his words are sharp. “Do not fall in love with Kun.”

Ten wants to laugh. Jaehyun says it so easily, as if Ten has not already done it, as if he could undo it. Reality is not as easy as these words. How can Ten not love Kun, when every piece of him vibrates with Kun’s handiwork? How can Ten not love Kun, his creator, the one who breathed life into him and still does? How can he not?

Jaehyun is staring at him now, gaze impenetrable. “Promise me,” he says, and his voice is stern. “Promise me, Ten.”

“I promise,” he croaks out, and the words are a sour lie on his tongue.

Jaehyun nods, satisfied with Ten’s answer, but he can never know the truth.

…

Jaehyun leaves the next day, and he and Kun talk for a long time in the foyer before he leaves. They shake hands and embrace, and Jaehyun even says goodbye to Ten with a firm handshake and wry smile. Their late-night talk comes back to Ten but still, he smiles and sends Jaehyun off with well wishes.

Silence follows after his departure, just Kun and Ten and no one else.

“Well,” Kun says. “Do you like him?”

He seems eager for some type of approval. Ten nods, but says nothing.

…

“Don’t play with your stitches,” Kun says over dinner. Ten looks at his wrist and realizes he was mindlessly pulling at the black thread. The skin all over his body has healed together, but the constant motion of his wrists and fingers always wear at the thread, always pull it loose.

He locks eyes with Kun then purposely pulls the thread free. He can see the disconnect of the skin and muscle, too glaring to forget.

He flexes his fingers experimentally and notices that there is nothing connecting his hand to his wrist. The thread was the only thing holding it together. Kun notices too, mouth dropping open. He looks almost panicked as Ten wiggles his fingers, hand looking like a pale white spider, black lines sewn on its legs.

Ten watches his hand skitter across the table, the movements both under his control and not. His hand, disembodied from the rest of him, jumps from the table to the chair Kun is sitting in and eventually settles on his lap. Kun looks down at Ten’s hand, resting on his thigh.

Ten can feel his face warming. “That’s new.”

“It’s absolutely fascinating,” Kun laughs, cautiously resting his hand on Ten’s. Ten can feel the weight of his skin, in some strange way—can feel the press of his fingerprints against his knuckles. It is a faraway feeling, drifting in the open air.

Ten smiles and covers his mouth with his other hand. He pinches Kun’s thigh and the other man lets out a surprised yelp, Ten’s hand already scuttling across the floor back to him. He picks it up and places it at the junction where it meets his wrist, not quite connecting.

Kun stands and then kneels at Ten’s feet, gently holding his disconnected hand. His eyes have an immeasurable fondness, as soft and sweet as a cloud at sunrise. 

“Do you need me to stitch it back on for you?” he asks. The black thread that was holding his wrist and hand together is unraveled in his lap, frayed in most places.

“I can do it,” Ten responds quietly. He cradles his hand against his wrist and Kun smiles gently at him.

“Of course,” he says, straightening. 

Later he gifts Ten with a spool of golden thread, the strands shimmering in their spool like the finest jewelry. Ten gasps.

Kun gestures to the black thread at Ten’s wrists, the thread that seems to unravel the most easily. “Just in case,” he says. “I thought you might like something nicer.”

Ten gazes at the sunshine glimmer of the thread and imagines what it would look like against his skin, glinting as he moved.

“Thank you,” he says breathlessly. Kun waves off the thanks as if it is nothing but Ten wraps his arms around Kun’s neck, holding him close. Kun stills, unsure. “Thank you.”

A pause. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, his hands rest on Ten’s waist. The touch is gentle and unsure, a little like Kun in that regard, but Ten does not move away.

Kun does, though. He clears his throat and takes a step back, eyes warm. “You should go rest,” he says, hand trailing down Ten’s arm. “Go to sleep.”

Ten wants to lean into Kun’s touch, wants to hold him so closely he never leaves, but he does not. Instead, he leaves to go to his room, gently shutting the door behind him. He can hear Kun walking in the hallway, pacing almost, before he vanishes into his own room.

Ten doesn’t sleep. Instead, he slowly undoes the stitches around his wrist, cutting through the string, and redoes them with the golden thread. His wrists become tiny gardens of gold leaves and flowers, circling the broken skin. He does the same with his fingers, methodically cutting and sewing until golden rings circle the spaces between his finger joints.

He falls asleep watching the lamplight glint off of his skin, the warmth of it lulling him to sleep. That night he dreams of stars, of sunbeams, of a smile that puts the world to shame. He dreams of what it means to love and be alive, and a question lingers on his tongue when he wakes but is too soon chased away by the morning sun.

…

Bigger. He is bigger than his body. He is bigger than the things that make him somewhat like a person, the things that make him both less and more human. His heart contains the sky, it contains the universe, it contains the vast never-ending emotion of love, in all its forms.

His heart holds Kun. His heart is a home for Kun, for his smile, for the unending knowledge that he contains.

Love. This is a lesson he learns, over and over again.

…

Kun is playing piano by lamplight, soft notes tinkling through the dark. The sound draws Ten from a fitful, nightmarish sleep and into the living room. 

“Kun?” he says softly, careful not to disturb the dark or Hutong sleeping by the door. “It’s so late. What are you doing awake?”

Kun’s hands still. He gives Ten a weary smile, patting the spot next to him on the piano bench. “Just thinking,” he says. “Did I disturb you?”

“No,” Ten says, and his mind shutters back to dark images and sensations that aren’t truly his. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

Kun nods. He gestures weakly to the piano. “Would you like me to teach you?”

“Now?”

“There’s never a wrong time to learn something new.” Kun’s smile is tired. Ten places his hands gently on the keys and Kun coaches him on how to place his hands, guides him through the motions. His left hand picks it up quicker than his right, as if the spreading of fingers is an easy memory. It’s unconscious, a completely unaware habit.

Notes stumble over notes, Kun reaching around Ten to help him. He murmurs that things like this take practice but _ ah, Ten, you’re a natural, I’m so proud. _

Ten feels a flutter in his chest that he ignores, and Kun’s touch on his wrist sends a burning sensation straight to his core that he cannot explain. Love has been so slow but suddenly it is here, here at the worst time, and Ten cannot ignore it. His fingers slip on the keys and the resulting mess of sound is enough to make Hutong blink his eyes and consequently roll over to ignore them.

Ten’s heart is beating so fast in his chest that he can actually hear it in the silence.

“Is there something wrong?” Kun asks. His expression contains immeasurable concern and softness, the two sifted together and unable to be separated.

“What’s it like to kiss someone?” Ten blurts out, counting the keys on the piano.

Kun’s hand is still resting on his wrist when he responds, voice quiet. “Why do you ask?”

“Is it nice?” Ten presses on. “Do you know?”

Kun looks at him and tilts his head. “I’m sure it is,” he says, and his eyes are dark, dark, dark.

“Would you do it?” Ten asks. “Kiss me?”

There is a long pause and Ten is about to take the words back, eat them up and swallow them so they never existed, when Kun takes his other hand. His fingers brush the stitches on Ten’s wrists, and there are callouses on his palms.

“Would you want me to?”

_Would you want me, too?_

Soft, soft words. So soft he could fall into them and sleep without dreaming.

Ten sighs a _ yes, yes I would _ and Kun leans forward. The kiss is soft and sweet and it reminds Ten of days on the lake, of hillsides, of things he has learned but does not recall. In this moment he is completely _ him, _ not just parts but a complete whole.

He kisses Kun back, hands reaching up to thread through Kun’s hair. Kun sighs, gentle as a breeze. They pull back, each watching the other with cautious, quiet eyes.

“I love you,” Ten blurts out, and there is no grace in the words. They are blunt and Ten wants to take them back as soon as he says them, wishes he did not have to watch Kun’s eyes widen in shock. He doesn’t know if he should say them but they are true. He wants to believe this is love. He _ wants _.

“You do?” Kun says, and his words have an unreadable hush. His face is flushed pink, and in that moment he is indescribably beautiful, to Ten. “You love me?”

“Yes,” Ten says, and the words pour out. He leans in closer. “I love you.”

Kun stands so suddenly he almost trips and he draws Ten into his arms, kissing him again, the two of them a perfect fit. Chest to chest, heart to heart, and Ten cannot name the hot feeling pooling in his stomach, the taste on his tongue that weighs him down. _ Desire _ , he thinks, _ wanting _.

Ten grabs his wrists, clinging to the solidity of them, and his voice is barely above a whisper when he speaks. He does not have the words he wants to say.

“I want you to love me,” he says, words stumbling. “I want you to unmake me,” he murmurs, eyes heavy. He places a hand on Kun’s chest, at the small sliver of skin where his shirt comes unbuttoned. His mouth feels like it is filled with cotton and his entire body burns as if he is on fire. He is being crushed, he feels. He is being undone by Kun’s touch.

Kun gives him a soft look, loving and gentle. “Only if you want me to,” he says, and his voice is raspy with desire. 

“Please,” Ten whispers, and the whine in his voice almost hurts to hear. “Please, Kun.”

Kun nods and even though the movement is slow and unsure Kun’s eyes are bright and dazzling. Ten melts into his touch, into the push and pull of emotions between them. Love is just a word, now: heaven is Kun’s hand on his chest, his stomach. He dimly recalls the names of muscles: pectoralis major, external oblique, rectus abdominis.

They barely make it down the hall to Kun’s bedroom, the two of them reduced to mouths that hunger and hands that roam without purpose. Ten wants to feel whole, he wants to feel loved, he wants and wants and _ wants _. The wanting consumes him in this moment and makes him feel complete; it makes every cell in his body respond to Kun’s touch as if they all belonged to the same human being.

Kun is unbearably gentle: he treats Ten as if he is a doll, as if he will shatter him, as if he is afraid he will unravel at the seams. He lays Ten down on the bed softly, strong arms circling his waist. Ten touches Kun, and he recalls: pectoralis major, external oblique, rectus abdominis.

Maybe Ten cries. Maybe they both cry, later, after the world stops spinning and Ten’s heart starts to beat a little slower. But now he knows a little better what it means to love, to give a part of yourself to someone else.

Maybe Ten knows a little better what it means to be human. What it feels like to be whole.

He watches Kun sleep next to him, arms draped around his waist protectively as if to hold him together. _ Yes, _ he thinks, placing a hand on Kun’s chest, _ this is love _.

…

Happiness, then sadness, then pain. He thinks he knows them, thinks he can grasp the concept of them, but his experiences vary. Happiness he has experienced in abundance, happiness he has experienced on the hills and in the lake and always with Kun. He has experienced pain only a handful of times, once when he dropped a cup and sliced his finger open and once again when Hutong had scratched his thigh. They were trifling pains and Kun was always there with kind hands and soft words. He has never hurt much. He is not sure he would know what to do if he did.

…

He finds that pain, real pain, comes on a sunny afternoon.

Ten is walking down the stairs, searching for the diminishing form of Hutong in the distance. He takes a step and feels his heart flutter. It flutters again, like a bird trapped in his body. He presses his chest gently, unsure.

His heart flutters again, over and over. The beat is erratic and irregular, not quite right.

Ten does not feel the world shifting until it has gone out from under his feet. He feels the floor come up to meet him, the edges of the stairs digging into his ribs like daggers. The world fades in and out and there is a deep pain in his chest, one that spasms through his arms and back. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills the pain to go away, wills it to stop, but it does not. It latches itself to him like a claw, and Ten cannot pry it off.

He gasps and clutches at his treacherous chest and the fabric of his shirt bunches up beneath his fingers. He cannot tell if he shouts but he makes some pained noise, like an animal, and there is the sound of footsteps, of a fading voice. 

Ten wants to say _ it is my chest, it is my heart, please, _ but he cannot make any sound. The pain has locked his teeth shut, has stilled every function in his body that does not keep him immediately alive. Ten is afraid, because if he is dying ( _ if he is dying is he dying no not yet please _) then that means that he was alive all along. Then that means he was human all along. 

Kun sweeps him into his arms as if he is a doll, voice murmuring into his ear. His hands are strong and sure and Ten melts into his touch. 

Kun lays him down and presses his ear to his chest, and through the dim haze of his failing vision he can see worried eyes, fluttering palms.

Ten tries to reach out but all he can do is squeeze Kun’s hand, resting on his chest.

If he is dying, at least it means he is human.

…

He does not die. Disappointing.

“Your heart is failing,” Kun says softly, lying next to Ten. The pain has subsided, becoming nothing more than a dull memory. “I’m going to give you a new heart.”

Ten stares at the ceiling, high above him. “Is it that easy?”

“Nothing is ever easy,” Kun says, kissing Ten’s stitched fingers. “But for you, I would do anything.”

Ten looks away from him. “Am I going to die?”

“No,” Kun says, pressing a hand against his chest. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Ten doesn’t ask where Kun will find a human heart that is in need of an owner. He doesn’t ask Kun a lot of things.

…

It takes weeks. In that time Ten is restricted to the house, to activities that will not raise his pulse. Kun watches him carefully, with the eye of a doctor and not a lover, and even though he warns Ten to keep his heartbeat slow and steady he cannot deny him. He gives him small kisses and a grasp of his hand, but nothing more, no matter how much he asks.

“I miss you,” Ten says. “You are gone so often during the night.”

“I am searching for a heart worthy of the man I love,” he responds, pressing his lips to Ten’s knuckles. The action sets his heart in a dangerous flutter, as it has many times before.

“Maybe you do not have to search so hard,” Ten says, a lump forming in his throat.

Kun sits up abruptly from where he is lying next to Ten. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“I—” Ten swallows. “I’m not really alive, Kun. Would it be so bad to just...let me go?”

“Don’t say that,” Kun says, grabbing Ten’s wrists. The glimmer of gold thread is lost in his grip. “Don’t ever say that.”

“You and I both know I am not meant to be here,” Ten says softly. “We both know.”

Unnatural, unnatural thing. That is what Ten knows he is. His creation follows him like a cloak, covers him from head to toe. _ Real _ people don’t sew themselves together at the end of the day, he tells himself. _ Real _ people don’t replace their organs like they are spare bits of machinery or china. _ Real _ people are born, not made.

Ten chants this to himself whenever he feels too human; it is the truth that keeps him grounded and yearning for something more. A picture-perfect storybook ending, a gold band around his finger that is not made of thread, a house that he calls home, a love he will live with for eternity.

He wants it so bad that some nights he lies awake and the ache settles in his bones. He wants. Oh, how he wants.

Kun shakes his head and his eyes are hard but they are also wet at the corners, desperate. He is holding Ten’s hands so tight in his that Ten worries he will fray the thread embroidered on his fingers.

“No,” Kun says, words hollow and sorrowful. They originate from somewhere deep within his chest, almost echoing as they pass through his lips. “No, Ten.”

He kisses Ten and it tastes like salt. It tastes like metal. It tastes like loss.

“You deserve to live,” Kun says softly against Ten’s mouth. “You are just as human as the rest of us.”

…

Kun finds a heart. He tells Ten the news with a smile and bright eyes. He does not tell Ten where it came from.

It is only later that the unsteadiness of it all crashes down on them, the danger, the uncertainty. Anything could go wrong, Ten knows—his body could reject the heart, he could die during the transition.

(he calls it dying but, he reminds himself, you have to be human to die)

Kun’s lab is brightly lit. The sun streams through the skylight and that is what Ten focuses on. Not the smell of carbolic acid or sterilizing flame, not the sound of Kun bustling at the lab nearby.

“Don’t you want to be asleep for this?” Kun asks, frowning. “It may hurt.”

Ten looks up at him, the cold metal of the table pressing into his spine. “It won’t hurt.”

Kun frowns, opening his mouth to say something but says nothing. He picks up a long metal instrument, edge sharp and terrifying, and Ten lets his thoughts drift far, far away.

Having his chest cracked open like a pair of broken birds wings does not hurt. He doesn’t even feel it. All he feels is a numbness, spreading from his chest all the way up to his neck, more a memory than anything else.

Ten thinks of green fields, of picnics in the rolling hillside. He thinks of metal and skin and silk and the softest pair of hands he has ever had the chance to touch. He thinks of Kun; soft, kind Kun, and his eyes that had always gleamed with fascination at things he could not understand. Ten thinks of life, of being alive, of being a living being. Nothing more, nothing less.

He turns his head and sees his new heart floating in a jar next to the table.

The sun will rise tomorrow and Ten will have a new heart. He will have a new heart and he may not be the same because isn't a heart the soul of a person? He wonders if he will love Kun after this, if the heart that had grown to love him is failing. Does love fail with it? If his heart decays, does this feeling do so as well? Ten doesn’t understand. He feels he never will. 

He watches Kun lift his own heart from his chest, a manic beating thing that reminds him of an animal struggling to break free. It’s foreign to him, something meant to be felt and not seen, but he cannot avert his eyes. He watches his own heart beat in Kun’s steady hands, a metaphor swirling in the darkest corners of his mind.

Dark. Without a heart, everything turns dark.

_ INTERLUDE // CREATOR _

_"It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world."_

_ In the beginning, there are the graveyards. _

_ Kun hates the graveyards. _

_ He hates the way that the stones stand, rows and rows of marble and granite and carved angels, all of them like small soldiers in the grass. He doesn’t like them, doesn’t relish the way the eyes of the angels follow him, how the memorials indict him with their carved figures. He doesn’t like being watched. Doesn’t like the feeling, or the way it makes his spine tingle. _

_ The digging is always the hardest part, physically. It’s six feet of heavy dirt covered with grass and flowers and god knows what else, and shovel doesn’t do the job as well as it should. Then he has to crack open the coffin, and that always results in splinters and gashes. He’s long since stopped relying entirely on the graveyards for parts, because the job is difficult. Morgues work just as well, as long as the body is not missed. Sometimes he takes bodies before they are cremated and replaces them, so the ash is there but nothing else. _

_ Trial number one was a failure, organs disconnected in all the wrong ways. When Kun sent the first sparks of electricity through it did not move, only jerked. Tries two through six were the same, missing something vital. He was closer with tries eight and nine, but they were still lifeless, eyes rolling but not alive. He can still remember the twitch in the ninth’s fingers, the hopeful feeling in his chest, the way he had reached out only to find no heartbeat and no chance at revival. _

_ Try number ten was different, he could feel it. It lied on the table, eyes closed, cold as the stones. Kun’s stitching was neat at the neck, at the wrists, in every part of that body and he had tried so, so hard to make it right this time. He had wanted perfection. He had wanted perfection, so he had made it. _

_ Electricity crackles through the wires and the metal table and there is the sound of popping and the uncanny glow of star-like sparks. The body jerks once, then is still. _

_ Nothing happens. _

_ Kun curses, silently to himself. How many graves had he robbed, how many bodies pulled apart and stripped for parts? How many, and for a failure? _

_ The body jerked again, but there was no more electricity. It jerked, and raised a hand, and Kun rushed forward to grab it. It was chilled, like the hand of someone left out in the snow, but there was still warmth there. There was something there. _

_ The hand leads to an arm which leads to a shoulder which leads to a chest that rises and falls. It leads to a throat that bobs once, then to eyes that open and stare. Kun can only watch open-mouthed as his creation comes to life before him, more beautiful and perfect than he had imagined. _

_ The thing on the table, a man with silver hair and eyes so soft they could put a man to sleep, smiles at Kun. He opens his mouth and his lovingly stitched larynx produces the sweetest voice Kun has ever heard. _

_ “Hello?” The word is a little disjointed, but it is still a word. _

_ “Hello,” Kun says, holding his creation’s hand in his own. He rubs a finger over the stitches at the base of the fingers, the stitching so fine it might as well be embroidery. _

_ The man seems confused for a moment and he sits up, Kun’s arm braced on his back. Kun is almost afraid his handiwork will fall apart but his creation stays in one piece, staring at him. _

_ Does he give him a name? Does he introduce himself? He had not thought this far into the process. _

_ “I’m Kun,” he says, voice soft. The man looks at him, head tilted. _

_ “And who am I?” he asks in halting speech, bewildered. Kun pauses. _

_ “Ten,” Kun says, and the man’s eyes almost seem to glow as he smiles. “Welcome, Ten.” _

_ … _

Wanting is a dangerous thing. It is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

What Kun had always wanted was a chance to do something great, to prove that he _ could _ do something great.

Kun had fallen in love with life, with its vibrancy and diversity. He had fallen in love with the idea of life, of creation, of living.

He had fallen in love. That is the most important part, reader: he had fallen in love.

…

"You've gone too far," Jaehyun says, hands clasped behind his back as he looks out the window. The hillsides slope in never-ending curves, lush and green. "You should not have done this."

Kun is silent for a moment, hand resting lightly on the piano. "You do not understand."

"I understand enough," Jaehyun says, turning. "I love you, brother, but this is one curiosity you should not have indulged."

"Ten is human," Kun says. "Almost perfectly so."

"You have no way of truly knowing your creation," Jaehyun says. "What happens when he stops being your perfect pet, your lovely little plaything? What happens when he gets angry? What happens when he finds out the truth?"

_ What happens when he turns on you? _

Kun swallows. "I… I will take care of it, if that happens.”

_ I could never destroy him. Never. _

"I only hope that you have enough strength to see the truth," Jaehyun says, voice sad. "I hope that you will do the right thing, in the end."

Kun looks at the piano, traces the path his fingers would take to make a song with his eyes. "I will," he says. "If I have to."

…

A memory stands out to Kun, just one of many.

“What is that?” Ten asks, pointing at a painting on the wall. It’s a depiction of the countryside near Kun’s childhood home, the field rolling and the trees green. 

“It’s a painting of where I used to live,” he says calmly, dabbing at Ten’s wrist with a cloth. It is a frequent habit, to keep the stitches clean. He is afraid of infection settling into the skin, undoing all that he has worked so hard for. He knows that Ten will become more resilient as time goes by but he still worries. Worries, and frets.

“It is…” Ten pauses, searching for the words. “Lovely.”

Kun looks at him, and Ten’s face has an almost melting gaze as he stares at the painting. Kun realizes that, for all the shared experience of the previous owners of those eyes, his creation has never seen grass, or sky.

“Maybe I will take you to see it someday,” Kun says. He watches Ten’s chest rise and fall, as normal as anyone else, and sighs in relief.

“That would be nice,” Ten says, smiling, and Kun’s heart stops and restarts as if it was him that was brought to life.

Stop, restart, over and over again.

…

Science has a rhythm; it has a song. A combination of chemicals is the same as the notes of music, and if you repeat them you get the same results. Over and over, over and under, under and around and there—there is the outcome. Stitches become a being, scraps become whole.

The song of life sounds something like a waltz, eerily reminiscent in the notes of crackling electricity and fizzing acid. Kun knows this song well, can recite it note by note. Thread through skin, electricity, glass against glass and then creation. Or something like that.

Kun sometimes fears that his work will drive him mad, that it will tear him apart before he can finish. In the beginning, he had locked himself away among corpses, as silent and pale as the dead. In the beginning, the wanting had consumed him, had driven him, nourished him, sustained him. Now it just dulls him, fades away.

Kun wants something. He wants _ someone _. 

…

Ten is fascinated with Kun’s cat and his tiny, tiny paws, and why shouldn’t he be? They are both the same.

Kun watches as Ten pats the purring feline, runs a finger along the stitches in its spine. It mewls against his palm, eyes flashing green and blue as it looks at the stranger of Kun’s making. It, too, is curious. It, too, wants to know.

Ten pats the cat, coos to it, coaxes it closer with a stitched finger. He smiles at it, the expression one of blinding joy. Kun turns away, back to his lab.

One in the same. They are one in the same.

...

Madness is a state of being. Kun knows it as a state of wanting, as a state of needing, and little else. The desire to know, to be known, is a part of him now.

But there are things he doesn’t know, and that is what drives him insane.

What happens when you make a monster that is not a monster, when you create a creature that is too beautiful to be real and then hide it away?

What happens when you fall in love with your own handiwork, with the stitches, the bones you dug up from the ground, the eyes you fixed into place?

What happens then? What?

(Kun wants so badly to know.)

…

Ten is still sleeping beside Kun when he slips out of bed and pads upstairs to the lab. He removes a notebook from beneath the bench, writing by the moonlight that shines through the skylight.

_ A success, _ he writes. _ I have succeeded. _

...

The first heart Kun chooses is a castaway from a corpse lying in a morgue covered by a sheet. It is a man, large and rough-looking, and Kun cracks his chest open and steals his heart. It is a couple days gone and Kun needs one that is fresher, more alive.

The next heart is a woman’s, its last beat echoing into an empty alley. Kun takes this heart and thinks that this one might work until he discovers a small hole in the side, a murmuring defect. This, too, is not good enough.

In between hunts for a heart he comes home to Ten, curls over and under and around him, promising that soon, soon he will find him a heart. A heart worthy of him, a heart that will not fail. Ten is usually too tired to care for his words, instead draping adoring hands across his skin.

Kun finds his heart.

He finds it at the last blow of an executioner's axe and steals the body away from the crowds and turmoil. The corpse is a young man, and its heart still has just enough life to be used. He does not hesitate to steal it away, this heart he has no right to. He pilfers it like a jewel thief would a diamond necklace, like a pickpocket would a wallet.

Kun takes things. He _ wants. _

…

This is not the first time Kun has held Ten’s heart. It is not the second, or the third, but he hopes it will be the last.

Ten’s heart beats like it is trying to escape his grip, like it is afraid to leave its body. His fingers are slick with blood but that is okay, it is nothing new. It is nothing new at all.

He looks at Ten, at his dimming eyes and distant expression, and places the failing heart in a jar. It beats heavily against the glass and Kun can hear it, thinks he will never stop hearing it. He places the new heart in Ten’s chest, slots it neatly into his chest where it should be. It sits nicely in the cavity and Kun connects all the veins, valves, arteries. He closes the pericardium, closes the layers of muscle and fat and skin, and then he stitches it all together. Ten’s expression doesn’t change. He looks almost like a fine porcelain doll, limbs splayed and bent.

Kun waits. He waits, and wants, because that is all he knows to do. A moment passes, then another—over and over, over and under, under and around.

Ten’s heart beats.

_ VERSE 2 // CREATURE _

_ “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.” _

In the beginning, there is loneliness.

One heartbeat, then two, then a murmur that becomes a steady song. Ten does not die. He is not human.

The realization hits him as he lies on the table, watching the sun beam through the skylight above. He can feel his limbs, each and every one of them and he can feel his heart beating in his chest. His lungs inflate and deflate and his chest rises but Ten feels cold, cold as if he is freshly dead. His eyes trace the motion of clouds through the sky and a feeling he has never had before wells in his chest. He does not know what to call it, likens it to some kind of sadness.

He sits up and Kun is there, hands pressing at his back and chest. He checks his pulse at his wrist and neck and he gives Ten a smile, soft and reassuring.

Ten places a hand on the center of his chest and feels coarse black thread, straight up and down, stitched with care and precision. He presses on the skin, expecting to feel pain but instead feels nothing. Nothing at all.

“Be careful,” Kun says, and his gentle hands are wrapping bandages around the closed skin. “I don’t want anything to get infected.”

Stitches. Ten is just stitches.

_ … _

There is a thing that bothers Ten. It is a thing that he cannot ignore, not when he looks in the mirror and sees the skin that makes up his identity, the limbs that are not truly his.

Things are fine, for a while. Life continues. He trades kisses with Kun and when nights are long and dark he curls beside him, waiting for sleep to come. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.

They visit the lake, they picnic in the hills. Ten sees things but somehow they are not the same. He wonders if he has had a change of heart, in some way that isn’t physical. His heart beats, he lives. He is human enough for this.

Ten tries to ask Kun about his creation, about the things that make him who he is. But every time Kun stops him with some petty distraction—a question, a song played on piano. He dodges questions, flirts with the answers, and Ten wishes the curiosity did not consume him so much. He wishes it did not eat away at him.

Hutong looks up at him with multicolored eyes, knowing. His look seems to say curiosity is better left unanswered. Maybe that is what killed him.

…

The question lingers on his tongue with the sweet taste of cherries, rotting away in his mouth until he bothers to ask.

"Where did I come from?" Ten asks, hands folded in his lap. He rubs his thumb over the gold thread embedded in his skin, clean and glittering. He watches Kun fuss with bottles and jars full of mysterious liquids, metals instruments cleaned to a loving shine.  
Kun's hands still at his lab. He turns to Ten, eyebrow raised. "I made you, of course."  
"Out of what? Parts? And where did _ those _ come from?" The curiosity burns through him, eating him alive like the core of a star.  
Kun stands and extends a hand toward Ten. He accepts it and Kun pulls him into a half-embrace, arm around his waist.  
"I gave you the hands of an artist," Kun says, sweeping Ten into the familiar footsteps of a waltz he has not yet learned. "I gave you the legs of a dancer, the mind of a mathematician. I gave you the bones of warriors and soldiers and fighters, I gave you the eyes of men who gazed endlessly at the sky." Kun pauses for a moment, voice quieter. "And when I made you, I gave you the heart of a friend."

It is not the heart he has now. No, this heart burns with some other feeling, some other thing he does not care to name. It burns with realization.

Sweet words. Sweet, sweet words. Ten can imagine the taste of them in his mouth, sweet like summer fruit and sunshine and long days on the hillsides.  
Ten looks at him, at that face that he thinks he loves more than any other, and he cannot hide the sadness that tinges his words. "And my voice? My face? Even those are not my own." His voice has a hush to it. "Am I just an amalgamation of parts? A patchwork quilt?"  
"No," Kun whispers, but Ten is already pulling away. "You are so much more than that."  
But Ten doesn't hear because he has the ears of a stubborn man, stitched on by Kun's own hands.

…

Emotions turn sour. They rot like fruit does, they wilt like flowers, they fray like thread. Ten loves Kun with every stolen part of him, loves him so much he hurts, but something dark whispers in his mind. He calls it doubt, and wonders why he has never felt it before.

It is his heart, he reasons. Someone bitter had this heart before, had twisted it with sadness and grief. He gets the urge, sometimes, to hurt Kun. It is a terrible, terrible thing, and it frightens him.

He dreams, and all his dreams are tinged with fear. They are tinged with unhappiness, with loss, with a staring crowd and vision that goes black.

Ten does not want this heart, he realizes, pressing a kiss to Kun’s cheek as he works. He does not want it all.

…

Ten walks through Kun’s laboratory, and without lamplight it seems a much crueler place, edges sharp and unknown. He sees familiar shapes twisted into unfamiliarity by the darkness, sees things he isn’t sure were there in the day. He does not know what draws him here, not when Kun’s arms had been so warm and the dark so inviting. His chest burns, his brain and heart at war. His heart wants to know; his mind does not.

Kun’s books, the ones he is not supposed to read, sit under his desk. Ten takes one out, running his fingers over the leather cover, and splays it open on the crowded workbench.

The scant moonlight illuminates formulas and numbers, letters without meaning. This is what Ten sees. He flips a page, and then another, sees diagrams and charts that he does not quite understand. He flips a page and sees a body, or at least the outline of one. The sketch is crude, covered with notes and scribbles and tiny x marks, but it is incredibly detailed.

Ten turns another page and finds dense writing crowding the page, Kun’s letters small and neat. He skims the page quickly, then stops. He starts reading again, slower this time, pulse speeding.

These are the secrets of his creation, immortalized in ink and small letters.

These are the secrets of his being, written step by step in detailed, neat handwriting. Some of the words are foreign to Ten but he understands too well what they say. He sits at the bench, stunned, as he pages through.

Diagram after diagram, pages crammed with notes, some crossed out and some circled. Ten can feel the heavy indent of a pen on paper, the words pressed into the pages with an almost madness.

He should be curious. He should be burning to know the truth, glad to finally find it, but it terrifies him. Words run together on the page, each more illegible and horrifying than the last.

Here is the story of his right leg: Kun took it from the body of a young man resting in a charnel house who had been stabbed to death during a robbery. The boy was a dancer, an up and coming star (and here in the notes Kun remarks how well formed his quads are), and Kun writes in detail about his careful separation of the leg from the body. He writes with clinical unfeeling; his words are cold, cold, cold.

Ten presses a hand to his mouth and he finds that he is shaking, that his right leg is tensing of its own accord. He wants to run but he is rooted to the spot, rooted to the truth.

He turns the page, and here is the story of his left hand: Kun pays a dying woman for her hand, for the promise that upon her death he can take it. He does not want to risk the hand becoming stiff and the woman agrees, because she is a poor musician with young children that she does not want to leave in complete poverty. Kun takes the hand the moment the last breath leaves her body, and he writes about the sound of children playing in the other room as he severs the hand at the wrist. He would take the entire arm but her shoulder blade seems to grind, ligaments wearing thin. It is not perfect, so he does not want it.

Ten’s hand is shaking as he tears his eyes away from the page and flings the book to the floor, the heavy paper and leather sliding across the wood. Ten can feel his world shifting beneath his feet but the reason is not physical. His heart is breaking, he is falling to pieces, he was never whole at all.

Histories rush at him like they are trying to beat the truth into him. Words crowd into his mind, words about bones and organs and skin that is not his. He is shaking from head to toe, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

He picks up the book with his stitched fingers, the ones he had lovingly embroidered with the gold thread Kun had given him. He sees now that everything about him, every tiny little piece of him, has never even been his. His hand trembles.

The book has fallen onto a page that contains nothing more than a sketch, black lines on white paper, and Ten squints at it. He is sure that his eyes are deceiving him, because the drawing looks exactly like he does.

Well, not quite—the ears are a little off, the cheekbones a little sharper, the hair black instead of gray. But it is undoubtedly him, in some phantom way. Less a drawing of him and more a drawing of the _ idea _of him. A conceptualization of a final form.

Ten wonders when Kun could have drawn this, in their time together. He looks at the photo and feels an aching cold. Like so many other things, the drawing is both him and not him, all at the same time.

…

Days pass. Time passes. 

They go out to the lake for a day and Ten remembers the first time he saw it, this perfect mirror between sky and earth. He watches his reflection in the water and even though it is his he feels distant, as if he is watching someone else.

“Is there something wrong, love?” Kun asks, rowing them back to shore.

“No,” Ten replies. He watches birds in the distance, flying in perfect formation across the blue sky. His heart feels cold, cold, cold. Kun frowns at him.

“Nothing is wrong,” Ten says, and he smiles at Kun and reaches for his hand.

…

Kun is frowning at a letter from Jaehyun, candlelight flickering over his features as he reads. He doesn’t notice Ten slinking behind him in the shadows of the hallway, bare feet silent on the wood.

That night Ten takes Kun’s notebook, not caring that Kun will notice its absence and question him. He takes it, steals it away like Kun did with every single organ in his body, and feels no regret.

…

“I’m missing one of my notebooks,” Kun says, frowning as he looks under his workbench. “Have you seen it?”

Storms brew above them, the sky darkening. Ten watches Kun with a blank expression, a block of ice sitting in his chest. Kun frowns.

“Ten,” he starts slowly. “Did you take it?”

“What if I did?” Ten answers, and he wants so badly to scream the words. _ A very human answer _, Jaehyun would say.

Kun stands, gaze thoughtful and scrutinizing. “Where is it?” 

“Away,” Ten says, standing so he can look at Kun as if he is his equal.

Kun’s stare is not unkind, but it is not soft either. “Ten.”

“How could you not tell me,” Ten says, and he is glad his voice does not shake. “How could you not tell me the truth?”

“The truth?” Kun steps forward, reaching out to Ten. He shies away from his touch, stepping back. “I knew the truth would only hurt you.”

“You should have told me,” Ten says, voice dropping to an angry whisper. “I should have _ known _.”

“Please,” Kun says, and his voice is soft. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Ten.” he draws Ten into his arms but Ten does not melt at the touch, wills steel into his stolen bones. “I’ll tell you the truth, I promise.”

Ten fishes the sketch out of his pocket, edge torn from the notebook.

“Why did you make me?”

Kun freezes. He grabs Ten’s shoulders, looking at him with shock.

“What?” he says, but it is all an act. He looks like he has seen the form of a ghost. He looks as if Ten has just spoken to him in a language that does not exist.

Ten watches Kun’s stricken face and remembers whole passages of Kun’s notebooks, so ingrained in his terrified memory that he could recite them in verse. He fishes a piece of paper out of his pocket, edge torn from the notebook. It is covered in dense writing.

_ I think I have discovered the secret to life, _ he had written. _ Now I can finally finish my creation, and he will love me. I will make him love me. We will be happy together. _

Kun shakes his head and the paper crinkles between his fingers, crumpling in his palm. “Oh, Ten,” Kun says, stepping back. “Ten, I-”

“Stop calling me that,” Ten says. “All this time you said you loved me and you couldn't be bothered to tell the truth or even give me a _ real name!” _

“No, that’s not true, I-”

“I read all about it in your journal,” Ten says, and he is dimly aware that he is crying. This has never happened before, the anguish and agony clouding his mind is an utterly new experience. _ So this is what sadness feels like, _ he thinks. He chokes on the bitterness of it, the way it tastes like salt in his mouth. “I was just experiment number ten and nothing more. You wanted to create life and you did it, Kun. You wanted to create a lover and you did it! You must be so _ proud!” _

The words come out in a frenzied, tearful rush and Ten wants so badly to take them back. He wants to turn back the clock so they never happened, turn back the clock to where he was naive and they were both happy.

"That's not true," Kun says, and he is pleading. "I love you!"

“You love the _ idea _ of me,” Ten murmurs. “That’s who you really love.”

Kun is silent.

“At least have the decency,” Ten whispers, the words thick in his mouth, “to be honest.”

Silence, words being made and unmade between them. Kun rubs his face, the paper crumpling in his hand. When he finally speaks, it is with halting words.

“I was so lonely,” Kun says, words breaking in the middle. “I was so, so lonely.”

Silence, the sky blackening above them.

"I used to travel a lot," Kun continues, and he closes and opens his eyes as if trying to see a phantom. "I traveled as far as I could, trying to see as many things as possible. I wanted so badly to fall in love, I wanted so badly to fall in love but I couldn’t. There was nobody."

Kun takes a shaky breath and sits at his workbench, eyes averted from Ten's.

"You could never know, Ten. I went from town to town, just passing through, and every time I thought I was in love it didn’t last. I loved so much it hurt." He laughs. "I would have stayed, somewhere, would have settled down, if I hadn’t been so...” Kun visibly struggles with the words. “So _ lonely. _"

Lonely, alone: Ten knows how inhuman these things can make a person seem.

"It was always my intention to make you love me," Kun says, and his eyes burn with sadness.

“None of it was real,” Ten says, and he feels like a collapsing star. “None of what I felt was real.”

“It was,” Kun says, pleading. “It_ was _.”

“Just...tampering,” Ten says, and the words bite. “All I ever felt was just chemicals and tampering and _ your _handiwork.”

“Ten—”

“It wasn’t real,” Ten repeats, and his head is spinning. “I never felt anything real, I—”

“It was real,” Kun insists, grabbing Ten’s hands. “I promise, Ten, I promise it was real.”

Ten feels phantom heat but knows that none of his limbs are burning. Not even his heart. He is lucky, in that regard.

"It’s true," Kun says, looking at Ten. "That I made you to love me. I wanted someone who would love me without reservation, who wouldn’t judge, and I tried over and over again until I could create something alive enough to do that. I wanted someone to love, Ten, so I created you."

_ You made me to love you, _ Ten wants to shout. _ You made me to love you and now I cannot stop. _ His stolen heart is breaking in his patchwork chest.

"You never loved me," Ten says, and his stolen heart is breaking in his chest. "You just wanted to pretend I did."

_ None of it was real none of it was real none of it _

_ Did it work? _ He wants to scream. _ Did I do a good job? Did you finally get what you wanted? _

"Please," Kun murmurs, "I love you, I will always love you. My creation," he whispers. "You are no replacement."

_ None of it was REAL _

"You lied," Ten seethes, and his heart twists. It is the heart of a criminal, dead by an executioner's blade, and he can _ feel _ it. "You _ lied." _

"I never lied, I never—"

"You didn't tell me the truth! You let me believe all those things you said!"

"I meant what I said!" Kun shouts back, the two of them locked in some kind of desperate struggle to find the truth. "I meant it when I said I love _ you _ because you are the only one there is who will love me back! I _ need _ you!"

_ You made me to love you but now I cannot stop. _

_ None of it was real. _

The words sting like pinpricks of ice and suddenly Ten feels frozen his skin too tight, his stitches too loose. Kun realizes what he has said and reaches out to Ten with panicked eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

Ten pushes him, maybe the first violent act he has ever committed, and Kun stumbles back against his workbench. Glasses tumble and shatter onto the floor, instruments clattering. Ten can see from here the glass that cuts into Kun’s palms, can see the glass coating the floor like diamonds.

"Don't touch me," he says, and there is something dark weaving itself through the words. Ten thinks: over and over, over and under, under and around. Maybe he wants to hurt Kun. Maybe he wants _ him _ to feel this agony, this anguish coursing through his veins.

Kun looks up at him with scared, sad eyes, and the thought dissipates. It vanishes and so does Ten, racing out of the room and down the stairs. He runs and runs, out the door and into the open fields, Kun's voice following him.

He does not turn back.

…

It is raining, and lightning streaks the sky like volleys of arrows hitting the earth. Light swirls in the clouds, moonlight and starlight and electricity, and Ten realizes that life is akin to light and he just wants everything to go dark. The light follows him and he wishes it wouldn’t, wishes it would vanish. Turn black.

Thunder crashes in the clouds, the sky shouting at him as he runs. Rain blurs his face and soaks him so that his clothes cling to him, rain makes everything dull and hazy. He cannot see very far ahead of him, does not know where he is going, but he knows he_ must _go.

The lake does not reflect the sky. It has become its own storm, water bouncing off the surface and into the air. The lake has become a hundred little raindrops, each with its own ripple. The lake vibrates, it writhes, it _ lives _.

The small boat is still tethered to the shore and Ten undoes the rope and pushes the boat out into the water. Simple movements are made difficult by wind and water. His arms burn as he gets in the boat, grabbing the oars and pushing them into the water.

He doesn’t plan to go anywhere. He doesn’t plan to do anything. Maybe he just wants to sit in the middle of the lake until the rain fills his boat and he sinks down into the fathomless depths below. Maybe he just wants to see what is on the other side and call it _ escape _ , call it _ freedom _.

He’s about ten feet from shore when he sees a figure in the distance, form smudged by the rain. 

“Come back!” Kun shouts, and Ten can see him waving his arms frantically.

Ten does not feel the tears rolling down his cheeks. All he feels is the rain crashing down around him. He paddles out further and sees Kun enter the water behind him, water rising to his waist then his neck as he leans forward and swims out.

_ Go back! _ Ten wants to scream. _ Let me be! _

He wants to sink, wants to fall down, down into the nothingness—he wants to experience life leaving him, wants to know in those final moments that he is human and real. Even if Kun does not love him, even if he only loves the idea of him, he will know that was a real human being. He will _ know. _

He watches his paddle push through the water and his reflection is lost in the ripples of rain. He watches the movement and thinks: over and over, over and under, under and around.

Kun shouts something, words lost by thunder and flashes of light. The sky is dark and grows even darker the farther Ten rows out. He is not afraid of the dark. He has never been afraid of the dark.

A hand grabs the side of the boat and Kun is saying something, something important about lightning and water but Ten does not hear him. All he hears is piano notes and electricity; sweet words and a sigh. All he can focus on is Kun’s terrified eyes, his soaked hair and pale knuckles. He is reaching out to grab him and Ten wants to say_ yes, I still love you, I will go with you _, but he cannot.

“Please!” Kun says, and his voice is laced with panic. “It’s dangerous! Come back!”

_ None of it was real. _

Ten’s heart aches. It aches and it is not even_ his _ heart. Cold. He feels cold.

“I can’t,” Ten says, and rain washes the words away. “I can’t.”

Kun opens his mouth to say something, something that will break Ten’s heart, but he never gets the chance to say it. There is a crackle and a snap and suddenly the water looks as if it is on fire. It glows for a second with electricity, tendrils glowing white before vanishing. 

Ten feels the current dimly, the wood of the boat protecting him from the worst. The lightning strikes the water, not him, but the charge of it raises every hair on his head and sends him reeling. Kun is not as lucky.

A flash; Kun lets out a half-scream, choked off by water and his hand slips off of the edge of the boat. Ten gets only a glimpse of a pale face and glassy eyes before he slips beneath the black water, image lost. Ten reaches over but he is already gone, sinking like a stone.

Over and over: Ten looks up at the sky and down at the water and in a second he is over the edge and sinking too, arms propelling him downwards. He sees a flutter of white cloth, Kun’s shirt, and swims to it. Desperation, desperation. Betrayal stings but Kun did not mean it, he did not _ mean _ to hurt him, and now he will die.

Ten cannot lose Kun. A creature without a creator is nothing at all.

Over and under: Ten grabs the front of Kun’s shirt, pulling him upwards. It is so much darker down here, the water just endless walls of black on either side of him. Kun’s face is peaceful but his eyes are open and unseeing, his hair floating around his face. Ten places a hand on his heart and feels nothing but current, nothing but the rush of water and electricity. He swims upward with his arm wrapped around Kun’s waist, the sky so far above them. 

Kun is not breathing, not even struggling to breathe. 

Under and around: Ten was born out of electricity but Kun is a real human and, as Ten reminds himself, real humans die. They die, and they don’t come back. 

Ten swims all the way to shore, not resting until he can push Kun’s limp form onto the solid ground. There are red marks covering his skin, branching across his neck and down his chest. They look almost like blooming trees, flowering red.

Kun does not breathe. Ten hits his chest, recalls something he read once in a book. He presses on Kun’s chest, trying to force the water out of his lungs and the life into his heart.

Moments stretch into eternities. Rain pours and thunder groans across the sky but everything fades into silence. All Ten wants to hear is a heartbeat. That is all.

A heartbeat does not come. It remains reluctant and Ten is crying but he can only tell the difference between tears and rain in the way they taste. A heartbeat does not come and Ten slams his hands on Kun’s chest, gasping and sobbing and wanting something that does not exist. Kun’s heart does not beat. It does not beat, or even stutter.

Rain. The rain is endless as Ten cries.

…

In his notebook, Kun writes about wanting. He writes about a desire to know, about a desire to consume knowledge in all its forms. But most importantly he writes about Ten, about the first time he opened his eyes, about each and every day they have spent together since his creation. His words are painted with fondness, with love and adoration, and even if Ten didn’t love Kun he would still be moved. 

Movement. Over and over, over and under, under and around.

Ten brushes his fingers over the words. In the other room, Kun is lying on the bed with a sheet pulled over his face.

Movement. Over and over. Ten’s fingers glint in the lamplight.

Ten turns the pages until he finds an empty one, and begins to write.

…

In the beginning, there is recognition.

Ten watches the man on the table opens his eyes. He blinks once, then twice, then frowns as if he is trying to recollect the fading fragments of a dream. His face is youthful but his hair is almost white. Death has aged him, but only a little.

The man sits up on the table and he sees the lab around him, sees glimmering metal instruments and glass jars filled with liquid. He sees these things and Ten is sure he knows their name but the words will not come to him at the moment. The man opens his mouth and closes it, searching for words.

Scars cover his arms, they crawl up his neck. Red scars like flowers or branches, crawling over and upwards. They are beautiful but in a painful way, their red lines etched into the man’s white skin. They speak of old pain, far away and just a memory.

(Over and over, over and under, under and around.)

The man blinks and swings his legs off of the table. Ten turns and they lock eyes, familiarity buzzing through them.

“Kun,” he says, and he is smiling. “How are you feeling?”

Kun stares at him for a moment, eyes blank. His hand grabs onto the table for support and Ten laces an arm around him to help. Kun blinks at the touch, and his eyes brighten.

“Ten,” he gasps, voice raspy. 

“Shh,” Ten says soothingly. He runs a hand over a patch on Kun’s back that is free of scars and surrounded by stitches. Tissue death was an...issue.

Kun looks at Ten and words rush back, time rushes back. The void in Ten’s mind becomes a bright light and Kun’s eyes widen, mouth gaping open.

“Ten,” he whispers, and Ten nods. He steps closer, pressing fingers to Kun’s wrist and neck. He nods to himself. There are stitches at Kun’s throat. All is well. All is well.

Kun places a hand on his own chest and notices a ridge, thick against his skin. He looks down and sees black thread interspersed with gold, the two colors twining around each other in his skin to form a pattern of leaves and flowers. His heart beats and Ten feels nothing but a strong steady pulse. Kun looks at the scars painting his body. He looks at Ten.

“A heart worthy for the man I love,” Ten says, warmth building in his chest. He sets the notebook on the table before wrapping his arms around Kun’s waist. A band of gold thread glitters around Kun's left ring finger, embedded into his skin.

Kun squeezes back, touch soft, gentle, and familiar, and Ten sighs. His voice is quiet. Ten knows loneliness now, knows it and has found it an unsteady companion. No, he does not prefer loneliness. He prefers _ this. _

Ten’s voice is a whisper. “Will you love me?”

Kun’s answer is equally quiet, almost monotonous. His eyes seem almost glassy. “Yes,” he says. The heart Ten stole for him beats without fail. “For the rest of my life.”

**Author's Note:**

> [the modern prometheus](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7BekCbuwrXOWy3pHOWxoQR)  
hmu!  
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